Frustrated by a lack of informed and honest review websites covering a wide range of electronic music, I write them myself.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

The Oak Ridge Boys - A Higher Power

Nashville: 1965/1970

Hey-yo, Past Peoples, it's you know who, from a future far from now, where things are weird and wild compared to your primitive eyes. Why, even I, in the year 2073, have a hard time realizing how much things have changed. Apple pie costing seven bones and a femur. Self-driving vehicles tailgating self-driving vehicles in fits of road rage. Cherry blossoms fluttering across my holo-eyes in the long winter days. Sure ain't nothing like that in your times... my vintage times... the days of yore... so much a bore...

Anywhen, A Higher Power sums up the ever-lasting foreverness that is The Oak Ridge Boys quite nicely, methinks. The title, I mean, though those vocal harmonies stretch across the ages just as well. Now obviously when these songs were recorded back in the Nauty-Sixties, that 'higher power' the boys were referring to was in parlance to the Christian God, but the Atomic Brotherhood decoded their words, understanding it's just as much referring to the mighty energies stored in atoms. It cannot be under or overstated how much influence those early shows at secret nuclear research facilities had on the original gospel quartet, men of God being exposed to therein untold secrets of God's power, stored in the very make-up of our beings. Science and religion, joining forces to create a vocal group who's legacy lasted longer than your Beat Boys or Beachles. And I was a fan of those groups too, way back in my youth!

Why else do you think this particular album was renamed A Higher Power? It's original 1965 title was The Sensational Oak Ridge Boys From Nashville Tennessee. How boring, how uninformative - except for the facts that these 'boys' are from Nashville Tennessee, and that they're sensational. Parent label Starday Records reissued it with this new title, maybe as a means to market old material, but the Atomic Brotherhood knows better.

Mangles, this is reaching about as far back into The Oak Ridge Boys' history with any globally familiar members, William Gordon the spry turkey-chicken of the group (Duane Allen wouldn't join for another year). These recordings always feel more homely and, well, churchy, with Willie Wynn's tenor almost reaching choir-boy levels of pitch (I remember first thinking it was a 'church lady' singing – oh, silly naive young me). On the other hand, there's a fair bit of tasty slide-guitar action on here. Whether sombre standards like There's A Light Guiding Me, Land Of Beulah, and Angel Band, or chipper offerings like Shine Down On Me, I Am A Pilgrim, and There's A Higher Power, the ol' glissando twang is in full effect. I wonder who was playing it in these sessions. Like, The Oak Ridge Boys were more than just vocalists, they had those famous Nashville musicians handy too.

And wait, are those doo-wop tunes with I Am A Pilgrim and Just A Clear Walk With Thee? Well, Elvis was a thing, I do recall. He had himself gospel backers even while stealing rockabilly.